Ferrari F60

I missed the launch this morning but there were some nice people who helped me out with links to photos below the previous new Ferrari post.

Now I had some time to digest the look of the 2009 Ferrari officially named F60. I must say that after seeing those hybrid BMW Sauber cars I expected something much uglier. At the end the new Ferrari does not look that bad, especially when viewed from the side.

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After seeing the interim cars featuring bits and pieces of strange looking 2009 parts we are about to see the first 2009 Formula One car today. Ferrari will be the first team to reveal their new car later today at Mugello and Felipe Massa is expected to take it to the track for few laps.

The first launch of 2009 season and I am going to miss it . As I will be on the plane for better part of Monday I will not be able to post any updates until late late Monday night so if anybody gets here before that, please post links to images in the comments, if possible no more than one link per comment to avoid the comment going into moderation queue. Thanks !

Seabstien Buemi graduates from GP2 to Formula 1

As expected Scuderia Toro Rosso have confirmed that Sebastien Buemi will be one of their racing drivers in the 2009 season. The team will however take sometime to decide who will be Buemi’s team mate with Sebastien Bourdais and Takuma Sato being the main candidates.

Buemi is part of Red Bull’s junior driver programme. Last year he raced in GP2 for Arden and finished the season in 6th place. He landed his Formula One race drive despite former Toro Rosso owner Gerhard Berger saying in July last year (when talking about fellow Austrian Andreas Zuber) – “What I always say is that someone in GP2 who wants to be in F1 needs to win the championship.” Well, Berger is no longer with Toro Rosso… Buemi however always seemed to be high on Red Bull and Toro Rosso list and his performanes during the December tests very much sealed his F1 drive. Team boss Franz Tost:

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As expected North West Leicestershire District Council approved plans for a £100 million track revamp. The Donington Park boss Simon Gillet is confident his venue will host the 2010 British Grands Prix.

But will they also be able to come up with all the money required to complete the project on time ?

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Fry F1 ?

Yesterday Nick Fry revealed that there are about dozen seriously interested parties in taking over the Honda F1 Racing team to choose from. Many names have been mentioned before. The “most likely” candidates however ruled themselves out. Carlos Slim was apparently never even considering getting involved, David Richards may have been but is not any more.

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Looks like Max Mosley decided to ignore Sir Jackie Stewart and to continue pushing for more cost cuts instead. The FIA president sent letter to FOTA, addressed to Dear Luca (di Montezemolo, FOTA chairman). I do not really know what to make out of it. The letter is generally written in very cooperative manner and even appears to show some signs that Mosley may actually have F1 fans in mind. But there are also some strong statements embeded within the text. Like for example this one on cost saving:

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It is 80 days before the start of 2009 Australian GP and here comes another instalment of the 2009 Formula 1 Season countdown. I missed the 90 days mark thanks to having to fight some sort of flu over holidays. But the countdown is back and I hope it will now smoothly go on without any further interruptions. So how are things with 80 days to go ?

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With all the eyes focused on future of the Brackley team formerly known as Honda we tend to forget that there is one more team with uncertain future also looking for a buyer – Scuderia Toro Rosso. The talk about Honda being suited by several interested parties may be encouraging for Red Bull. If there indeed are several parties in talk with Honda that means that even in the current conditions there are people interested in entering Formula 1. When (if) Honda is sold some of the loosing bidders may turn their eye to Toro Rosso. May, if the team is assured of future existence. Some sponsors on board would probably also do no harm to longe term prospects of the former Minardi team.

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Ferrari will be the first to launch 2009 car

The 2009 launch season is around the corner. After having chance to sample what 2009 Formula 1 may look like during earlier winter tests we will soon have the chance to see the real things. Most of the teams will introduce their radically redesigned 2009 cars during next 2 weeks. The launch season will kick off on Monday January 12 with Ferrari unveiling their car. Here is the overview of all the 2009 Formula 1 car launches:

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Sir Jackie Stewart speaks his mind

Sir Jackie Stewart has spoken again. He did not say too much new in his interview with The Times Online. But he nicely summed up thoughts and feelings of many Formula 1 fans, race organizers and perhaps even team owners. The interview is rather long and I would recommend reading it in its original form (click here) but here is summary of points Sir Jackie made:

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The Formula 1 liveries are back with season 1996. Season 1996 – Jacques Villeneuve arrived in F1 and Williams dominated the field with the champion Damon Hill starting from the front row in every single race.

The look of the grid was so much different than a year later in 1997 … This was the last season of the iconic Marlboro dominated red and white McLaren livery, Jordan was on the way to turn yellow but in their first Benson & Hedges season painted their cars gold to match the colour of the ciggy boxes. Benetton changed several logos on their sidepods and also took Kingfisher on board – the first time Vijay Mallya got himself involved in F1. Arrows was called Footwork that year and Forti although folding after 10 races still managed to run 2 very different liveries. The green one was to signal the life saving sponsorship deal with Shannon Racing that however later went sour. This was also the last season for Ligier before Alain Prost turned it into Prost.

Well, and Ferrari car looked rather funny and quite different from the others back then in 1996. But for the first time they had Michael Schumacher in the cockpit…

Williams - Renault

Ferrari

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The 2008 year is now over and so I looked back at the visitor statistics here at F1Wolf.com. I was most interested in knowing where the visitors came from.

I am not surprised to see the biggest number of visitors coming from United Kingdom. What I am surprised is to see visitors from the United States to be very close in 2nd place, followed by readers from Canada, countries that Formula 1 decided to leave behind … Singapore, Australia, Spain, Poland, India, Hong Kong and Brazil make up the top 10 (see the chart below). In total readers from 188 countries landed at this site in 2008. As this is Asian based blog I am very happy to see very nice number of visitors from this part of the world !

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